“We’re not going to let [Conservative Leader] Pierre Poilievre tell us what to do,” Singh said on Sept. 19 ahead of the tabling of the first of several such motions by the Tories.
But if the NDP was biding its time in hopes of a reversal of polling fortunes before triggering an election, the party’s popularity seems to have drastically declined with the change in the political environment. This came about after the resignation of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his replacement with Mark Carney, as well as the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president.
By the time Singh said he was ready to bring down the government in December, Parliament paused for Christmas break, and was subsequently prorogued until March 24 at the request of Trudeau when announcing his plan to resign in January.
This robbed the opposition of the chance to table a non-confidence motion before Carney was chosen as the new Liberal leader and prime minister, who then in turn triggered an election on March 23 for April 28, dissolving Parliament.
The Gamble
The New Democrats once formed the official Opposition back in 2011, winning 103 seats in that year’s election. But since then, they’ve been on a decline.In the 2015 election, the NDP dropped to 44 seats. That went down to 24 in 2019 before the party gained one more in the 2021 election to bring its seat count to 25.
But current projections show the party may not even meet the minimum 12-seat requirement to be considered an official party in Parliament.
According to Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto, the NDP’s exit from the supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberals was intended to give the party enough “breathing space” to differentiate itself from the Liberals in the run-up to an election.
Graefe said the NDP faced a “catch-22” situation when it came to the option of triggering an early election. Although the Liberal Party’s weak position benefited the NDP, an early election would have almost certainly led to a Conservative majority.
“If they had brought down the government, a lot of the voters whom they'd be trying to win over in that election might have said, ‘all we did was open the door to a Conservative majority government,’ and they would not be able to actually catch those voters,” he said.
“The NDP was in a very weak position at that moment, and I think it decided to keep the thing going in the hope that the situation might improve.”
Changing Support
Wiseman said the NDP’s decline is due to many progressives voting strategically in their ridings to ensure the Conservatives won’t win, with NDP voters switching to the Liberals if it appears their party is unlikely to win, and vice versa. This is done to prevent vote splitting, where a third party pulls votes away from a major candidate or party on the same side of the political spectrum.This trend has been largely impacted by the Trump presidency.
Impact on Conservatives
The Conservative Party has usually done well in federal elections where the NDP also did well, and vice versa, as the NDP vote eats into Liberal support.Graefe said if the polls continue showing the Liberals in majority territory, there is a chance more NDP voters may not feel they have to vote strategically to keep the Conservatives from power, and thus move back to the New Democrats.
“Maybe the 5 or 6 percent of the electorate that has left the NDP for the Liberals might decide to move back,” he said.